GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

The “Health” Racket

I must say I was kinda surprised to read Steyn’s take on all this. It wasn’t quite what I would’ve expected from him, although perhaps I should’ve.

I rejoice in the confirmation of RFK Jr as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services (no thanks to longtime Chinese asset Mitch McConnell). “Make America Healthy Again” is the indispensable component of “Make America Great Again” – because the most obvious sign of what’s gone wrong in the country is to take a walk down any main street. No one would bet the future on a country that has debauched its human capital the way the United States has.

As Bobby Kennedy pointed out on The Mark Steyn Show, Americans are the most medicated people on the planet and are the unhealthiest in the developed world; in particular, as RFK also noted on our show, our children are the world’s most medicated children, and have accelerating rates of childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, childhood heart disease. A grade-school diagnosis of diabetes can take up to two decades off your lifespan.

So what’s the answer? Further enriching Blue Cross-Blue Shield? Americans pay more for health care than anybody else, and have lousier outcomes, starting with the most basic indicator of all – life expectancy: According to the UN, from the Swiss to the Australians, the list of peoples that enjoy an extra half-decade of life over Americans lengthens year on year. In the 2023 UN rankings, the United States comes in at Number Fifty-Five on the life-expectancy Hit Parade; for purposes of comparison, Albania – where the men smoke seventy a day and accessing the health-care system requires swimming to Italy – is at Fifty-Three. By 2022 America’s annual spending on health care was twelve-and-a-half grand per capita; Albania’s was under five hundred bucks – which is less than your co-pay on a Covid anal swab; the word “co-pay” does not exist in Albanian.

Four years ago, we first had RFK Jr on the show mainly because no one else wants to talk about this. If you’re wondering why, it’s because his late friend Roger Ailes, of Fox News, told him that in non-election years three-quarters of Fox’s ad revenue comes from Big Pharma.

Five years ago, the state and the pharmaceutical companies joined forces for an unprecedented experiment on you – to damage almost every aspect of daily life, including even more damage to a generation of children. There has yet to be an accounting for that.

And THAT’s what really stings about this, at least for me. Although admittedly, the only way We The Peepul will ever get an accounting is to r’are up on our hind legs at long, long last and demand one. Not “request” one; not ask politely for one; not hold a referendum and vote on whether or not we’d like to have one at some later, unspecified date; but straight-up remind our “public servants” of their proper place in the grand scheme of things, get ‘em skeered and keep the skeer on ‘em, and inform them in no uncertain terms that there is by God going to be one, or we’re gonna damned well know the reason why not. T’was ever thus, ain’t nothing whatsoever new.

More, and even worserer:

I was also glad to see, in the above clip, RFK trash USAid, which was after all founded by his uncle. As noted earlier this week, it’s now a near parodic example of the racket that the federal government has made of everything it touches. According to the above-mentioned Daily Telegraph, Trump has only been in office for three weeks but he’s already killing grannies:

US aid freeze claims first victims as oxygen supplies cut off

Seventy-one-year-old woman dies after being sent home from USAID funded hospital.

This story is by Sarah Newey, the Telegraph’s “Global Health Security Correspondent” in Bangkok. In my day, the Telegraph didn’t have a “Global Health Security Correspondent” in Bangkok or anywhere else. It’s not funded by USAid, is it?

Oxygen isn’t really that expensive. A member of the Steyn team required it at an event in Colorado a couple of years back. It certainly isn’t that expensive if you’re the “International Rescue Committee” and have revenues of over a billion dollars per annum. Of course, like everyone else on the take from USAid, the International Rescue Committee pisses away a lot of its dough. It pays its president, David Milliband, over a million bucks a year. No, not Ed Milliband, the talentless prat who serves as His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Net Zero. This is his brother, David, the talentless prat who was British Foreign Secretary back in the Gordon Brown era and parlayed that into a seven-figure salary with this IRC racket. As I always say, the “non-profits” are where the big bucks are.

The racket goes on. Uniparty warmonger Victoria Nuland was last heard of on The Mark Steyn Show warning that the zillions of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine could easily fall into Russian hands. Why are American taxpayers outsourcing gain-of-function to Kharkiv and Odessa? Well, they’re world-renowned experts in developing a new strain of monkeypox with fewer homophobic overtones…

The good news is that the all-war-all-the-time queen, who’s even more bloodsoaked than David Milliband, has just been appointed to the board of the “National Endowment for Democracy”. Ms Nuland is an expert in democracy, having ended it in Ukraine. “NED” was founded back in the Eighties, at taxpayer expense, to “export the American way of governance” – so that every nation may enjoy the blessings of paying former foreign parliamentarians a seven-figure salary to kill l’il ol’ ladies.

That’s the point. Whether you’re a Thai gran’ma, a Ukrainian infantryman or a New Hampshire grade-schooler, Nuland-Milliband-Big Pharma government is killing you. I wish RFK and the other Trump 47-iconoclasts all the best.

As should we all, whether we find Trump’s personal swashbuckling, over the top style grating or not.

SICK!!!

No, these lunatics are most certainly NOT okay.


Your obligatory “Show more…” end-run.

At a protest against Trump’s executive orders targeting child mutilation procedures on minors, Actress Cynthia Nixon reveals that:

-Her daughter is transgender

-Her niece is transgender

-Her best friend’s child is transgender

-Her daughter’s best friend is transgender

-Her life is filled with transgender people, “young and old, but especially young.”

President Trump is saving American children from one of the most destructive social contagions in human history.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. Back into the closet with you, you depraved freaks. There’s something very, very wrong with people like Nixon, and I’m at a loss as to whether they can ever be fixed and made whole again. Not that they’d ever allow any such attempt to be made, of course.

Dems double down on depravity

“Standing up for the rights of families,” for the first time in recorded history.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took his book tour to HBO and Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, where he urged Democrats to double down on telling Republicans to “just stay the fuck out of their business” when it comes to parents wanting to give their children gender-altering “health care.”

Maher had just finished lamenting that the recent forum for the DNC chair election, complete with a land acknowledgment and other progressive cringe-inducing antics, showed the party hasn’t learned anything when Hayes replied, “I think that, I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t had a moment across the political spectrum of some form of progressive communication that’s either left them bewildered or a little like ‘Eh, I don’t know about that,’ but at the same time, there is a message of what I would call common sense patriotic pluralism. That is a majority message.”

No, what you ACTUALLY have there, Chris, is an incomprehensible word salad, exactly the sort of bafflegab you dirty swine throw in Normal faces when you don’t want them to catch on to what you really mean underneath the gobbledegook.

The first example he reached for was, “If some father and mother have health care for their kid lined up, who is trans, just stay the fuck out of their business. Like, and let them make that decision. That’s their decision to make. You don’t have to make that for your family. I’m not going to tell you what to do with your family.”

Maher pushed back, “I mean, but the argument is whether the child should make the decision.”

Hayes strained credibility to add, “But the child is never making the decision. The parents are always making the decision. Parents consent to medical care.”

Eventually, Maher would add, “They would say it’s disfiguring a child.”

Hayes was unmoved, “I think they should mind their business; I really do. I think they should mind their business, and I think that’s true about a lot of things.”

Ironically enough, that’s precisely what the rest of us have been trying to tell your criminal organization masquerading as a political party for decades now, only to have you ignore us and go right on as before. As Ed helpfully points out, this would seem to be a policy volte face for PMSDNC, although I do NOT recommend anybody rush out to bet money on it.

In 2013 the network ran ads that their parent company Comcast-signed off in which the message was explicitly stated that “your kids are not your own.” Last year, Kamala chose a veep, who, as the Daily Caller noted, “Greenlit Law Allowing State To Take Child Custody From Parents Who Oppose Sex-Change Surgeries.” Now that there’s a Republican in the White House who doesn’t want to see them mutilated before they can consent as an adult to procedures that could permanently alter them, Hayes responds, “just stay the f**k out of [the parents’] business!” Past performance, etc.

Why, one might almost think that the shitlib stance on the rights of families, if any, hinges on whether or not the “transgender” religion is involved.

Carbon fact vs fiction

Originally intended to run this meme in tomorrow’s Memezapoppin’ edition, but it merits its own main-page post, I think.

Telling, no? Now, I just happen to know right offhand what the amount of CO2 in Earth’s mostly nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere is: a whopping .03 percent. Or .04%, depending on who or what the source is. That being so, the contention that even quadrupling or quintupling it would have any noticeable affect on life as we know it looks even more absurd than it already did. Therefore I commend to your attention another of Mike’s Iron Laws, #149 this time.

Update! Man oh man, those MILs sure have come in mighty useful, haven’t they? Makes me damned pleased and proud I came up with the idea, I must say. The way things are going, looks like I’ll have reasons aplenty to add a bunch of new ones in the days ahead. Reminds me that I have another post I’ve been working on that I really need to finish and get up which in its way reinforces the notion of this websty being a fairly decent resource.

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Short and Sweet for The Last Day of 2024

No comment needed
Beauty in Australia

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The ever-shifting Climate Change DOOOOOMSDAY timetable

Probably about due for another one, I expect.

FLASHBACK: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015

Amusingly enough, the date on this Newsbusters post is, ummmm, June 2015.

New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.

The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, “It’s June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.” (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: “Gas reached over $9 a gallon.” (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.)

On June 12, 2008, correspondent Bob Woodruff revealed that the program “puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.”

As one expert warns that in 2015 the sea level will rise quickly, a visual shows New York City being engulfed by water. The video montage includes another unidentified person predicting that “flames cover hundreds of miles.”

Then-GMA co-anchor Chris Cuomo appeared frightened by this future world. He wondered, “I think we’re familiar with some of these issues, but, boy, 2015? That’s seven years from now. Could it really be that bad?”

Turns out, no, Chris. No, it most certainly could NOT. Ed Driscoll chews the shitlib Chicken Littles up, spits ‘em out.

Quick Reminder: Nobody at ABC Personally Takes Their Global Warming Doomsday Predictions Seriously, Either
Obviously, no one at ABC thought so, since the network never moved their corporate headquarters from its tony Upper West Side address, despite attempting to scare the crap out of gullable low information viewers that Manhattan would be flooded in seven years. And notice that the network never cut back any of their entertainment programming or sports coverage, despite the enormous reduction in carbon output and the incredible statement it would make. (Insert the trademarked Insta-Rejoinder here. No, not the one about “I don’t want to hear an other goddamn word about my carbon footprint”; the other one.)

Nor should they take their own horseshit seriously, honestly. Nor should anybody else, for that matter. DEAD GIVEAWAY: Throughout the decades-old End Times panic-pimping, whether it’s global cooling, global warming, or the non-specific Climate Change all-purpose fallback, the solution has always remained the same: more government, higher taxes, less freedom. That’s the tell that NOBODY ought to take these shrieking hysterics at all seriously—about anything, EVER.

Every single last grim “prediction” they’ve puked forth over lo, these many years has been dead wrong—Manhattan/London/the Eastern Seaboard underwater; no more polar ice caps; new Ice Ages bringing solid-sheet glacial ice to mid-Nebraska, perhaps even northern Texas; oceans receding, turning lush, pleasant American coastal areas into barren deserts; spontaneous flash-fires from extreme high temperatures exterminating every living thing on Earth, whether plant, animal, or vegetable; no more water to be found—EVERY. LAST. ONE, just as wrong as wrong gets.

With a record so dismal as theirs, one would think these imbeciles would sooner or later be embarrassed by such ludicrous, neverending failure and slink quietly off into red-faced obscurity, hoping saner sorts would stop pointing and laughing at their stupid asses. Yet still they persist.

Many Westerners profess to be utterly mystified as to the primary appeal of those lifelike robot-girlfriends currently in vogue with young Japanese males, but not me. It ain’t hard to figure out, actually; unlike their human counterparts, the high-tech fuckbots have an “OFF” switch, that’s what the primary appeal is. Kinda reminiscent of the old joke about prostitution: you aren’t paying the hooker for sex per se, you’re paying her to leave afterwards.

Similarly, all Progtards ought to come with an easily-accessible “OFF” switch factory installed, maybe high up on the back betwixt the shoulder blades. Or, if nothing else, a “Volume” knob that can be dialed all the way back to its “SILENT” setting and left that way until they’ve finally run out of breath and stopped yapping and/or yawping.

“Science”? The pathetic jackasses wouldn’t know actual science if it walked up and punched them in the mouth.

Update! Hoo boy, the Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ sob-sisters ain’t gonna like THIS.

The Czech division of the International Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel) organized a two-day climate conference in Prague on November 12-13, 2024, where climate scientists declared that the “climate emergency” is over. The conference concluded with a communiqué drafted by the participating scientists and researchers that targeted the climate hysteria promoted by the United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The declaration has 18 different point referencing climate science and facts that counter the narratives being pushed by the IPCC and those who want to push their green agendas. I have listed the first six below (which should be familiar to Legal Insurrection readers); the remainder can be found in the copy of the declaration.

  • The modest increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age has been net-beneficial to humanity.
  • Foreseeable future increases in greenhouse gases in the air will probably also prove net-beneficial.
  • The rate and amplitude of global warming have been and will continue to be appreciably less than climate scientists have long predicted.
  • The Sun, and not greenhouse gases, has contributed and will continue to contribute the overwhelming majority of global temperature.
  • Geological evidence compellingly suggests that the rate and amplitude of global warming during the industrial era are neither unprecedented nor unusual.
  • Climate models are inherently incapable of telling us anything about how much global warming there will be or about whether or to what extent the warming has a natural or anthropogenic cause.

Though I have to say, #17 is a favorite of mine:

Since wind and solar power are costly, intermittent and more environmentally destructive per TWh generated than any other energy source, governments should cease to subsidize or to prioritize them, and should instead expand coal, gas and, above, all nuclear generation.

But, perhaps most importantly, the conference attendees demand the end of persecution of those researchers doing real science who struggle to share their reasonable and reliable findings whenever the data counters the political narratives.

Yowch! Common sense seems to be breaking out all over the place nowadays. The inescapable fact is that the climate has been changing ever since we’ve HAD a fucking climate; always has done, always will do, and there’s precious little, if anything, we puny hoomans can do about it. The arrogance, the narcissism and egomania, required to contend otherwise is nothing short of grotesque, even maniacal. If humankind in fact needs saving from CC (PRO TIP: it doesn’t), it’s a lead-pipe cinch that higher taxes and more government isn’t gonna do the trick. Carlin said it best, I think.

It was perfectly true then, and it remains perfectly true today. If self-absorption, vanity, and melodramatic hyperventilation had monetary value, the stupes would all be richer’n Croesus.

Updated update! The darker side of the Save Gaia NOW© fantasy.

Clean energy could create millions of tons of waste in India. Some are working to avoid that
On the edges of a dense forest in southern India, six women in a small garage are busy stitching cloth bags, pants, hospital gowns and office uniforms with automated sewing machines.

About four years ago, power cuts constantly interrupted their work. Heavy rain disrupted transmission lines and air conditioners pumping in extreme heat exhausted the grid. But now a small black box in a corner of the garage, not much larger than an office printer, keeps their operations running. The battery pack, made from used electric vehicle batteries, keeps their sewing machines and lights on even when the main power is off.

“This battery is a godsend for us,” said H. Gauri, one of the women. “Before the battery came, we’d have to stitch manually when there was no electricity which is exhausting. That is not a concern anymore and we’re able to finish all our orders on time.”

While the group is successful, initiatives like it in India are still few and far between. As the country gets more electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines, all aimed at reducing the country’s dependency on planet-warming fossil fuels, energy experts say that India will need to find ways to repurpose the batteries, panels and blades at the end of their lifespans or risk creating millions of tons of waste. If the country comes up with a comprehensive strategy to recycle components, it would both reduce waste and lead to fewer imports of the critical minerals needed for clean power in the future.

Currently, many panels, batteries and other clean energy parts end up in landfills. But others are processed by unlicensed waste recyclers, and some newer businesses and organizations are coming up with ways to recycle the valuable components.

As always with shitlib fever-dreams, the speculative benefits are off in some distant, gauzy Never Neverland-to-come, while the costs are right here, right now, and wildly exorbitant.

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“Sustainable”

ain’t.

Thyssenkrupp to cut 11,000 jobs at steel division in major corporate shakeup
DUESSELDORF, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Thyssenkrupp’s (TKAG.DE), opens new tab steel business plans to cut some 40% of its workforce over the coming years, it announced on Monday in the latest painful overhaul of a German industrial giant, with workers promising fierce resistance.

Germany’s largest steelmaker, a division of Thyssenkrupp AG, is under pressure from cheaper Asian competitors, high power prices and a weakening global economy, leading to operating losses in four of the past five years.

Not to be making light of German suffering or anything, but one can’t help but wonder if the following might have anything to do with those high power prices I put in bold above.

The German government knew shutting down nuclear plants during the Ukraine war energy crisis was a bad idea but did it anyway, and the Green party minister may have been been deceived by his own people to make sure the closures went ahead, a magazine that sued the government to get internal documents released claims.

Germany ordered the closure of its final three nuclear power plants in 2022, the culmination of a years-long process to transition towards ‘renewables’, which ironically left the nation scrabbling for hydrocarbons like brown coal, gas, and LNG. This confirms long-held “suspicions” of government lies, the conservative opposition says.

Bold mine again, and dispositive, it would seem. But nah, must be a coinkydink or something, I suppose.

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MOAR Destructo-X

As if being a cop in San Franshitsco wasn’t already humiliation enough.


Hilarious.

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Boeing: the long, slow death of a legend

The Woke mind-virus, as Elon Musk hath so aptly dubbed it, claims another formerly-distiguished victim.

Boeing Employees Humiliated That SpaceX Will Rescue the Astronauts Stranded by Starliner
“We hate SpaceX. We talk s**t about them all the time, and now they’re bailing us out.”

Over the weekend, NASA finally made the decision to return Boeing’s plagued Starliner without a crew on board. That means stranded NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will now have to wait for a SpaceX Crew Dragon to return them from the International Space Station in February, stretching an eight-day journey into an eight-month one.

In other words, the aerospace giant’s first crewed test flight has been a disaster, with technical issues afflicting Starliner’s propulsion system proving insurmountable and putting the company in the position to be “rescued” by its biggest competitor in space tech.

Unsurprisingly, NASA’s decision to return the capsule with no crew on board has been a major blow to morale. As the New York Post reports, Boeing employees were left “humiliated” following the announcement.

Worse yet, it’s not just Starliner’s messy test flight — Boeing has been dealing with numerous crises, from passenger jets falling apart mid-flight to reports of major mismanagement.

“We have had so many embarrassments lately, we’re under a microscope,” one Boeing worker told the NY Post, speaking under condition of anonymity. “This just made it, like, 100 times worse.”

“We hate SpaceX,” he added. “We talk shit about them all the time, and now they’re bailing us out.”

Fran deftly puts paid to that whiny-ass horseshit.

Oh, you hate SpaceX, do you? You should be overpoweringly glad that SpaceX doesn’t hate you. If Elon Musk were similarly minded toward you, he’d leave your astronauts in space until you could retrieve them. How do you think that would look to the flying public, on top of all your other recent disasters?

Uglier’n the proverbial mud fence, I’d bet, if the rest of the flying public thinks anything like the tiny fraction of it sitting at this h’yar desk o’ mine does. Gee, wonder what these weepy, wimpy Boeing diversity-hires might look like, just out of pure idle curiosity?

Oh. Exactly like one would expect them to look, then. As Bob Bishop pithily puts it: Houston, we have a problem.

We do at that. But hey, at least OUT! cupcakes such as the two above-depicted Stunning, Brave HEROES!!!© feel “seen” and “heard.” That’s what really matters, right? Especially when it’s manned space flight, meeting the myriad challenges of exploring the Final Frontier, and the rigors of cutting-edge science and engineering with actual human lives on the line we’re talking about.

Four or five more years of this and the intentionally enfeebled Boeing Company will exist only in memory—just another proud American icon brought low by Wokester dweebs ’n’ feebs, their relentless PC ethos, and the Long March Through The Institutions. Then, for Gus, Casady, and their noxious ilk, it’ll be onwards and upwards to the next target slated for destruction.

Seriously, who gives a tinker’s damn about space nowadays? What did space exploration ever do for anybody? Any chest-thumping American Supremacist with a selfish hankering to burn tons and tons of (fossil!) rocket fuel so’s they can go fiddle-futzing around out in the Vasty Black Nowhere can always hitch a ride with the Rooskies, the (dot-not-feather) Indians, our bosom chums the ChiComs, or some other space-faring nation-state.

Hell’s bell’s, I never liked Tang anyway; the stuff tastes like warmed-over doo-doo with a fistful of used litterbox sand stirred in.

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Say CHEESE!

Francis unearths some unsettling facts which are bound to throw any lover of boxed mac & “cheese” right off his feed.

An uncle to the clan cleared his throat. “Kevin,” he intoned, “you know I sell cheese, don’t you?” The youngster nodded. “Well, it’s about time you learned about the Great Pyramid of Cheese.” And he told them all about it.

It seems that there are places where they make Cheese. The real stuff, straight from the milk, brimming with the odorific and oleaginous virtues that your narrator has found he cannot renounce. And it is good.

Most of it, anyway. Some wheels of cheese just don’t turn out right. But they’re not thrown away, oh, no. That would be wasteful. They’re sold to factors from other shops, which take them in, and melt them down, and add oil, and chemicals, and further processing, and thereby produce… Cheese Food. Cheese Food is regulated by law to contain no more than 49% non-milk additives, and must not contain any but a specified list of preservatives and artificial flavor enhancers. There are people who eat Cheese Food by choice. There are others who are trying to help them.

But some batches of Cheese Food don’t come out right either, and they’re not thrown away, either. They’re sold to factors from other shops, which take them in, and melt them down, and add oil, and chemicals, and further processing, and thereby produce… Process Pasteurized Cheese Food. PPCF is the step down from Cheese Food, and may contain up to 70% non-milk additives, plus a much wider range of flavor and color enhancers, and preservatives that guarantee that it will not spoil over the three months between your toddler’s two demands for a grilled cheese sandwich right now, mom!

And not all of this is saleable, either, but (you guessed it) it’s not thrown away just for that. The rejected barrels are sold to factors from other shops, which take them in, and melt them down, and add oil, and chemicals, and further processing, and thereby produce… Process Pasteurized Cheese Food Substance. PPCFS may contain up to 82% non-milk additives. The flavor and color are almost entirely chemically produced, and the preservatives in it are reputed to be stronger than formaldehyde. Velveeta was once PPCFS, but has moved up the pyramid to Level 3 (PPCF). Cheez Whiz is PPCFS. A number of people have drawn images of the Blessed Virgin on their basement walls with PPCFS from spray cans, and have made quite a lot of money.

But…that’s right. Some of it doesn’t meet the standards for retail-saleable PPCFS. The rejected barrels are sold to factors from other shops, which take them in, and melt them down, and add oil, and chemicals, and further processing, and thereby produce…

Well, it doesn’t really have a name, and it doesn’t need one, either, because all of it is consumed by a single company.

“And Kevin,” the uncle rumbled, “would you like to guess what that company is?”

Little Kevin swallowed and shook his head.

“It’s the Kraft Company, Kevin.”

OOF. Please, I beg of you, don’t anybody tell my kid about this, ‘kay? A diehard devotee of boxed mac ’n’ (kinda-sorta-somewhat, more or less) cheese from an early age, she’s liable to resort to drastic measures if she ever gets wind of it, up to and including mass murder.

The above excerpt is from an old 2007 (!) Porretto post that somehow got by me the first time around; happily, though, Bayou Peter caught it. Or, y’know, UNhappily, as the case may be.

PRO TIP: Back when I was still able to bestir myself now and then to whip up some honest to God scratch-made macaroni and cheese, I came up with a concoction I dubbed Tex-Mex Mac & Cheese, made with one (1) can of Original Recipe Ro-tel (my perennial standby; like the iconic Texas Pete hot sauce, it makes ANYTHING better); cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses; pasta shells or ziti (NOT elbow macaroni, unless I had nothing else on hand); and thick-sliced, hefty hunks of Zatarain’s andouille sausage in portions generous enough to draw a sigh of blissed-out contentment from even the most decadent of bipedal root-hogs.

Delicious as it was, and it assuredly was, I never could persuade Madeleine to so much as try the stuff, alas. In those days, she didn’t care much for andouille, whereas tomatoes in any way, shape, or form—canned or fresh off the vine, sliced, diced, chopped, pureed, or etc—were completely out of the question.

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Hemi requiem

Our blog-bud Eric Peters mourns the auto-destruction of a once-noble Detroit marque.

The End for Dodge?
Dodge is looking a little green around the gills all-of-a-sudden. Not just Dodge, either. Parent company Stellantis just posted “worse-than-expected” stats for the first half of this year.

“The company’s performance in the first half of 2024 fell short of our expectations,” CEO Carlos Tavares said in a statement that doesn’t quite convey the extent of just how far those expectations fell short. Stellantis’ operating income fell by 40 percent over the past six months – and “free cash flow” stands at “negative $400 million euros.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, this jibes with what is no longer available this year in all-but-one Dodge model (the Durango, which is a lingering last-call remnant) and no longer offered in Jeep and Ram truck models that used to offer it.

That being a V8 and specifically, the Hemi V8 that came to define the brands that no longer offer it.

Not that there is anything wrong, per se, with the new inline six that has replaced the V8 in the models that used to offer it. As Dodge and Ram and Jeep (Chrysler’s down to one model, a minivan, that never offered a V8) have said, the new inline six makes more power and is more efficient.

And that’s true.

The point is it’s not a V8 – and that’s a problem for brands that built their brands around V8s. Dodge especially. It’s analogous to what happened to VW when it stopped selling Beetles with air-cooled flat four engines; VW became more like all the other brands. That makes it harder to retain – and attract – buyers who wanted what those other brands didn’t offer but VW did.

This brings up a general problem besetting the entire industry, which is beginning to face real consequences for putting compliance rather than customers first. It was one thing for the latter to overlook or put up with being obliged – assuming they wanted a new vehicle – to accept seat belts and even air bags, which followed as inevitably as AIDs follows HIV. But what began as minor annoyances – and relatively trivial cost increases – has metastasized into a kind of cancer that is killing interest in buying new vehicles, not just those made by Stellantis.

As of last year – 2023 – the total number of vehicles sold in the United States had declined by 2 million, down to 15.5 million annually from the peak of 17.5 million in 2016. The figure is arguably more ominously suggestive than at first glance, too – because the population has increased by at least 10 million since 2016. If adjusted for that, the actual decline is probably closer to 3 million.

Some of that can be attributed to “the pandemic,” but that’s now more than two years in the rearview. What’s happened over the past two or three years is that a tipping point has been reached – and passed. The costs of compliance have driven the average price paid for a new vehicle to nearly $50,000 – and that was as of last year. It is likely to surge past that, this year.

As CF Lifers know—as Eric himself knows—only too well, Amerika v2.0’s power-drunk central goobermint considers this surfeit of trouble, misfortune, and woe a feature, not a bug. The carelessly-concealed bottom line here is that our FederalGovCo lords and masters don’t want Serf Class knaves driving any kind of car whatsoever—not even those feeble, useless, coal-powered Yuppie Puppie play-purties they’ve ordered everyone into, they don’t. Want/need to go someplace well outside easy walking distance from home, you cavil piteously? Work; grocery/hardware/pet supply/Big Box store; Happy Hour to chillax a while with friends (sorry, my bad, Happy Hour’s been outlawed); the kids’ Little League game; hospital/emergency room/Doc In A Box/pharmacy/dentist’s office; the gym; Gramma’s house, perhaps? Spit on your ass and slide, peasant.

Y’see, there’s a damned good reason why personal automobiles (and Harleys, natch) have long been hailed as “the great American freedom machine”—because that is exactly what they are. Unfortunately, individual freedom of movement—a/k/a the freedom to travel as, when, and where one pleases unmonitored and unmolested, empowering one:

  • To schlep the fam off to the beach, mountains, or lake for vaycay
  • To attend a movie, play, or concert
  • To visit a restaurant for dinner out
  • To grab a carton of milk, loaf of bread, pack of skid-paper, and/or bag of cat litter
  • To just joyride aimlessly way out in the sticks, windows down and radio crankin’, on a pleasant early-April afternoon unburdened by twelve (12) pounds worth of signed, dated, and notarized Official Authorization Application forms neatly filled out in quintuplicate by hand (black ink ONLY, mind; use of non-black inks or pencil will result in applicant’s immediate arrest on charges of Felonious Non-Compliance, Aggravated Meandering, and/or Unlawful Insurrection, among others). Completed forms must be duly submitted and registered with the Proper Authorities no fewer than eight (8) weeks in advance of intended date of departure; sloppily penned, smudged, and/or misspelled submissions will be rejected and shipped to a local facility for recycling. Applicant may submit a new form for review and evaluation after the required six (6) month cooling-off period has passed. A lawful maximum of three (3) submissions over no fewer than ten (10) years is permitted for each applicant

—is something They™ simply cannot, will not, abide.

You think I’m only kidding about this? Hyperbolizing, exaggerating for effect? Overstating the case to make a more general point? Would that it were so, my friends. Of all the rights and liberties They hate—which is, y’know, ALL of ‘em, actually—individual freedom of movement is probably the one They hate more ferociously than any other. It gnaws at Their vitals like a horde of termites on a floor joist: keeps Them awake nights, disrupts Their digestion, leaves Them feeling all achey, listless, and out of sorts.

So Stellantis finally bites the big one after decades of struggling to comply with arbitrary, unattainable FederalGovCo standards for auto emissions, fuel economy, and passenger safety? Big fuckin’ whoop. That makes it one down, three to go for Detroit’s once-mighty Big Four, then. For A) grabby, preachifying ProPols; B) scuttling bureauweasel lickspittles; C) innumerable Überstadt Enforcement Komissariat doorkickers humping a full combat-patrol loadout, including det-cord, flash-bangs and fraggers, select-fire battle rifle plus four (4) 30-round backup mags, Level IV body armor, and helmet-mounted NODs; D) climate “science” “experts” purchased wholesale by FederalGovCo out of Ivy League credential mills; and E) miscellaneous dreadlocked, damp-drawered Eco-tard cultists whose dorm rooms (and persons) exude an emetic miasma of patchouli, cat urine, spilt beer, unwashed asscrack, high-octane sinsemilla, and rancid bong-water—seriously now, what’s not to like?

4

Government playing God

YET AGAIN, that is.

To save spotted owls, US officials plan to kill hundreds of thousands of another owl species
To save the imperiled spotted owl from potential extinction, U.S. wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan to deploy trained shooters into dense West Coast forests to kill almost a half-million barred owls that are crowding out their cousins.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service strategy released Wednesday is meant to prop up declining spotted owl populations in Oregon, Washington state and California. The Associated Press obtained details in advance.

Documents released by the agency show up to about 450,000 barred owls would be shot over three decades after the birds from the eastern U.S. encroached into the West Coast territory of two owls: northern spotted owls and California spotted owls. The smaller spotted owls have been unable to compete with the invaders, which have large broods and need less room to survive than spotted owls.

Past efforts to save spotted owls focused on protecting the forests where they live, sparking bitter fights over logging but also helping slow the birds’ decline. The proliferation of barred owls in recent years is undermining that earlier work, officials said.

“Without actively managing barred owls, northern spotted owls will likely go extinct in all or the majority of their range, despite decades of collaborative conservation efforts,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Oregon state supervisor Kessina Lee.

The notion of killing one bird species to save another has divided wildlife advocates and conservationists. It’s reminiscent of past government efforts to save West Coast salmon by killing sea lions and cormorants that prey on the fish, and to preserve warblers by killing cowbirds that lay eggs in warbler nests.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is turning from protector of wildlife to persecutor of wildlife,” said Wayne Pacelle, founder of the advocacy group Animal Wellness Action. He predicted the program would fail because the agency won’t be able to keep more barred owls from migrating into areas where others have been killed.

The shootings would likely begin next spring, officials said. Barred owls would be lured using megaphones to broadcast recorded owl calls, then shot with shotguns. Carcasses would be buried on site.

Sick, arrogant fucks. But don’t any of you Serf Class oafs be getting any bright ideas from this, mmmkay?

Public hunting of barred owls wouldn’t be allowed. The wildlife service would designate government agencies, landowners, American Indian tribes or companies to carry out the killings. Shooters would have to provide documentation of training or experience in owl identification and firearm skills.

Oh goodie, I feel better already! I’m confident it will all work out a-okay—y’know, just like every other one of their meddlesome, half-baked schemes has— now that I know that goobermint-vetted “experts” are involved. There DOES seem to be one other tiny, minor little problem though.

But there is more to this story than the “old growth” fabrication. Another misrepresentation is that the northern spotted owl is a unique species at all.

Endangered “northern spotted owls” are a “sub-species” of spotted owls, which means they are, in fact, the same species as California spotted owls and Mexican spotted owls, which also live on the west coast. Their difference is that geographic distance and separation have caused some differences in plumage and appearance. To call these spotted owls a different “sub-species” is like stating that Norwegians, Koreans, and Nigerians are different subspecies of homo sapiens. The notion of bird “sub-species” is actively rejected by many in the ornithology community.

This research piece from the Cooper Ornithological Society makes it rather clear that the spotted owl is all one species, noting that the northern spotted owl’s identifying features are based on a specimen from Puget Sound in Washington, while the California spotted owl is based on one from Southern California, but the identifying features of spotted owls gradually morph between the two locations.

In summary, two great lies are at the root of the environmental damage that has been done in the name of the spotted owl: 1) That logging was responsible for their decreasing spotted owl population in the Pacific Northwest; and 2) That there is even such a species as the “northern spotted owl.”

But hundreds of thousands of barred owls are now going to be killed in perpetuation of these lies. Considering that the “green,” anti-carbon advocates of the wind industry defend the senseless killing of millions of eagles, raptors, and migratory birds as a necessary religious sacrament, this proposed owl slaughter is consistent with the 21st Century environmental movement.

Ummm…OOOPS! Well, hey, ya wins some and ya loses some, I reckon. After all, it’s really the thought that counts, right?

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And so it goes

First off, before we get to clearing yet another too-long-open browser tab, I just can’t resist running this highly apposite meme.

Gee, thanks so much, Jaux! Why, whatever would we do without you looking out for us poor Serf Class schlubs, anyway? And what do we have to do so’s we can find out quicker?

Okay, speaking of oddly-behaving gas tanks…

Would you buy a car with a shrinking fuel tank?
HAVING the technical knowledge of an amoeba, I’m not in any position to list the huge number of problems linked to electric vehicles (EVs) such as their eye-watering cost and their road- and car park-wrecking weight. There’s also their rare but potentially fatal tendency to turn into 2,000 degrees infernos due to a chain reaction known as ‘thermal runaway’. But I thought I’d ruminate for a moment on the differences between the power sources of EVs compared with petrol/diesel vehicles: an EV battery vs a petrol/diesel fuel tank.

With an EV battery:

  • the maximum range seems to be somewhere between 150 and 250 miles;
  • you’re advised to charge it only up to 80 per cent; the battery degrades every time you charge it, thus reducing the range;
  • when the battery needs replacing (supposedly after eight to ten years but probably earlier), you’ll need to spend over £10,000 on a new one, so you might as well scrap your EV;
  • even a minor accident or bumping into a kerb may mean you have to buy a new £10,000 battery as it’s impossible to know whether the potentially explosive battery has been damaged;
  • owing to the high replacement cost of EV batteries, insuring EVs tends to be much more expensive than a petrol/diesel car;
  • many public chargers don’t work because thieves find it profitable to cut the cables to sell the copper.

With a petrol or diesel vehicle:

  • the fuel tank gives about three times the range of an EV;
  • you can fill the tank to 100 per cent of its capacity;
  • the tank remains the same size and gives the same range however many times you fill it;
  • even if you keep the vehicle for ten to 15 years, you’ll probably never need to buy a new fuel tank;
  • small accidents or bumps are unlikely to do any damage to your fuel tank;
  • thieves are unlikely to cut the fuel hoses in petrol stations to sell off the rubber.

Yet our rulers plan to force us all to buy expensive but largely useless EVs supposedly to save the planet from supposed (but non-existent) catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.

Permit me to refer you to Mike’s Iron Law #149 and its accompanying Corollary A—what the hey, #213 also while you’re over there, it relates—if you wish to understand why this bizarre, seemingly nonsensical state of affairs progressed from over-the-top, non sequitur-ish tomfoolery to Amerika v2.0’s contemporary reality. Then see Mike’s Iron Law #873 for a broad, non-specific hint as to how it might be properly dealt with.

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Be afraid, be very afraid

He damned well OUGHTA be fearful. In a better, more just world, he’d have ample reason to be.

Dr. Fauci says he still fears someone may kill him
(The Hill) – Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former chief White House medical adviser, said that he still fears someone may murder him one day.

“I still think, deep down, that there’s a possibility that somebody’s gonna kill me,” Fauci said in an interview with USA Today released Wednesday. “So, that’s a possibility I wish I didn’t have to think about, but it’s true.”

Fauci noted that he has “become the target of people with extremist views.”

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has regularly been targeted by conservatives over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2022, a man from West Virginia was sentenced to a little over three years in prison following threats to him and others.

“One of the several unfortunate aspects of the outbreak was that it occurred at a time of profound divisiveness in our society,” Fauci told USA Today.

In another recent interview on CBS with by Stephen Colbert, Fauci was asked by the comedian about how he would “diagnose America as a patient right now.” Fauci said that Colbert would need a surgeon rather than a doctor of internal medicine, to which the host replied asking him what he would say if he were a psychologist.

“There is a degree of schizophrenia in the country,” Fauci said. “It’s just, it really is, I mean, how far apart people can be that they seem to forget how much alike we are, but we’re acting like we’re so, so different.”

Vive la différence, sayeth I. God forbid anyone should ever conjure I have a single solitary thing in common with your evil, mass-murdering ass, Herr Gnome.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

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Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

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